12-05-2012, 04:43 PM
I've played a bit of the first. You're that guy in the spacesuit (Captain Olimar), and you amass a tiny army of those little guys (Pikmin). They follow you around and you can throw them, tell them to stay, call them, etc. Mostly they help you to carry stuff, but you can also get them to work together and beat up monsters and such.
Different colours to do different things. Red are just your "standard" Pikmin, they can just do what I said above. Yellow can be thrown higher and can carry "bomb rocks", Blue don't drown in water (others do), and I think Purple are invincible (to monsters, not sure about water since I haven't got them yet). I think there are more colours in Pikmin 2, as you can see here in 3 we've got these new Black ones that probably do something special too.
So basically you just tell Pikmin to do various things to help you achieve your goal (in Pikmin 1 this is to get all your spaceship parts back). The thing is, you have to do this in "days", one day I think is about 20 minutes in real life. In Pikmin 1 you also have only 30 days to get as many bits as you can, although I think in 2 (and probably 3 too) you don't have a limit.
Not sure if that answers your question but that'll give you an overview. Personally I'd say it's a strategy game more than anything, there are no puzzles or reflex challenges (that I know of), basically you just have to control your Pikmin effectively. The scale is between your classic RTS (Warcraft, Age of Empires) and micro-management (Dota, Dawn Of War II), since you're directly controlling Olimar and giving your Pikmin orders through him.
This is all just my experience though, I've only played about 9 days of Pikmin 1 so I could be way off on what the series is like overall.
Different colours to do different things. Red are just your "standard" Pikmin, they can just do what I said above. Yellow can be thrown higher and can carry "bomb rocks", Blue don't drown in water (others do), and I think Purple are invincible (to monsters, not sure about water since I haven't got them yet). I think there are more colours in Pikmin 2, as you can see here in 3 we've got these new Black ones that probably do something special too.
So basically you just tell Pikmin to do various things to help you achieve your goal (in Pikmin 1 this is to get all your spaceship parts back). The thing is, you have to do this in "days", one day I think is about 20 minutes in real life. In Pikmin 1 you also have only 30 days to get as many bits as you can, although I think in 2 (and probably 3 too) you don't have a limit.
Not sure if that answers your question but that'll give you an overview. Personally I'd say it's a strategy game more than anything, there are no puzzles or reflex challenges (that I know of), basically you just have to control your Pikmin effectively. The scale is between your classic RTS (Warcraft, Age of Empires) and micro-management (Dota, Dawn Of War II), since you're directly controlling Olimar and giving your Pikmin orders through him.
This is all just my experience though, I've only played about 9 days of Pikmin 1 so I could be way off on what the series is like overall.